Monday, 3 June 2013

Lightcliffe - The story so far...

The model of Lightcliffe that the Pennine Area Group is currently working to build was originally started by Chris Arthur to model the station as it would have been in the 1930s when it was then under the auspices of the LMS railway.

Lightcliffe station, which closed on June 14th 1965, was on the line between Halifax and Bradford and the area modelled goes from the sidings for Brookes Ltd. at the Halifax end of the layout up to Lightcliffe Station and Goods yard at the Bradford end.

The track plan used is taken directly from Ordnance Survey maps of the area, with the pointwork built by Chris exactly as per the prototype -

The three scenic boards built thus far are 10'6" long and cover the area shown above, and any additional boards for the fiddle yard will be 'off stage' and not scenic.

Originally, the layout was to be set up in Chris's loft with the station and the backscene against the wall and the operators being inside the layout. With the group adopting the layout this is being changed so that the storage sidings will be immedaitely behind the station, reached from the main boards by curves at either end of the layout so that the baseboards will be in a 'dogbone' format.

So far, apart from the single slip on the crossing into Brookes sidings, all pointwork is operational albeit manually operated from the Wakefield Road side - this is to be upgraded to electric operation using servo motors on a single control panel. Also, the layout is wired to allow the goods yard to be operated, as well as a train run up and down the Bradford line.